YOUNGSTOWN: Donald Trump called Monday for “extreme” ideological vetting of immigrants seeking admission to the United States, vowing to significantly overhaul the country’s screening process and block those who sympathize with extremist groups or don’t embrace American values.
“Those who do not believe in our Constitution, or who support bigotry and hatred, will not be admitted for immigration into our country,” Trump said in a foreign policy address at Youngstown State University. “Only those who we expect to flourish in our country — and to embrace a tolerant American society — should be issued visas.”
Trump’s proposals were the latest version of a policy that began with his unprecedented call to temporarily bar foreign Muslims from entering the country — a religious test that was criticized across party lines as un-American.
The Republican nominee has made stricter immigration measures a central part of his proposals for defeating the Islamic State, a battle he said Monday is akin to the Cold War struggle against communism. He called for parents, teachers and others to promote “American culture” and encouraged “assimilation.”
Trump’s address comes during a trying stretch for his presidential campaign. He’s struggled to stay on message and build a consistent case against Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Clinton has seized on Republican concerns about Trump, highlighting the steady stream of GOP national security experts who say their party’s nominee is unfit to serve as commander in chief. She kept up that argument Monday as she campaigned alongside Vice President Joe Biden in Scranton, Penn., a working-class area where both have family ties.
“Hillary has forgotten more about American foreign policy then Trump and his entire team will ever understand,” Biden said.
Biden called Trump’s views “dangerous” and “un-American.” He warned that Trump’s false assertions last week about President Barack Obama founding the Islamic State could be used by extremists to target American service members in Iraq.
“The threat to their life has gone up a couple clicks,” Biden said.
Trump has since said he was being sarcastic in accusing Obama of founding IS. Still, he directly blamed the president and Clinton, who served as secretary of state, for backing policies that “unleashed” the group, including withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq in late 2011.
He also challenged Clinton’s fitness to be president, declaring she lacks the “mental and physical stamina” to take on the Islamic State.
Trump was vague about what he would do differently to decimate IS in its strongholds in Iraq and Syria. He vowed to partner with any country that shares his goal of defeating the extremist group, and named Russia as a nation he would like to improve relations with.
Trump’s most specific anti-IS proposals centered on keeping those seeking to carry out attacks in the West from entering the United States. He said attacks involving “immigrants or the children of immigrants” underscore the need to implement “extreme vetting.”
Trump said implementing the policy overhaul would require a temporary halt in immigration from “the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism.” He did not identify those regions, saying he would ask the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to do so once he is elected.